parshiot

Thursday, July 07, 2011

A while back, I discussed Nir Ben Artzi's zany claims of nuclear meltdowns of nuclear plants intended for nefarious purposes within evil countries. Since then, we have heard quite a number of media reports of nuclear woes. Does this mean that Nir Ben Artzi is actually a real, honest-to-goodness, psychic, rather than a delusional tractor driver or con-artist?

I don't think so, and I will explain why, with the chart below.

Reports of problems, or potential problems, with nuclear power plants, have risen. There are two possible reasons for this:

There is an increased number of actual problems

The number of actual problems have remained constant, but media scrutiny has increased

This is similar to the rise in autism and ADHD rates in recent years. While perhaps some environmental factors are causing the problems, many researchers attribute the rise to more attention being paid to the conditions and greater funding and support for people diagnosed with such conditions, such that diagnoses are up.

The Mainstream media is interested in having readership and a viewing audience. They care about ratings, because it means higher revenue. With the tsunami triggering the awful situation with the Fukushima nuclear power plants, the public became worried about a similar thing happening to them. Since the public is interested in it, the newspapers and TV stations will produce stories investigating such situations. And a story where disaster is imminent sells better than where everything is almost surely alright, such that there is a motivation for media hype.

Thus, for one example among many, there is flooding of the Missouri River, causing worries about the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant in Nebraska. But there are multiple levels of redundant fail-safes, and people carefully monitoring the situation. Just as there were for the past few decades, in cases you have not heard about. Just now, you are hearing of all these things that go on behind the scenes. And this flood of information is worrying, to the public that does not have sufficient knowledge of the situation and keeps hearing scary stories on the news. And so this feeds into the frenzy, and increases the motivation for the media to seek out and hype up such stories.

The situation is similar when it comes to delusional tractor drivers, including Nir Ben Artzi. Some awful event occurs and suddenly he notices it. And it becomes worked into his delusions. Thus, at the beginning of the year, there was not a word about Japan. It was all about how China would cease to be a country. Not a word about tsunamis. Not a word about nuclear meltdowns. Suddenly, the tsunami hits in Japan, sparking the likelihood of nuclear meltdowns, and he starts speaking all the time about how Japan would cease to be a country. And he adds tsunamis to his long list of disasters he speaks about each week. And he starts predicting nuclear meltdowns. Of course, it all needs to fit into his worldview, which is Hashem punishing the wicked nations, and so it is only wicked nuclear power plants which will be destroyed. (In other words, he was explicitly NOT talking about the one in Nebraska.) Similarly, he was not talking about Australia until disaster struck Australia.

So there you have it. Both the increased coverage in the media and the increased discussion by delusional tractor drivers are effects of the initial disaster. But that does not mean that in substance, there is increased incidence of nuclear meltdown, or that this was all predicted by a psychic in Israel.

But I caution you, as everyword you say will be recorded and you will be held accountable for them as you well know; and we must remember that HaShem has His reason for allowing this "delusional tractor driver or con-artist?" (your words not mine)to do what he is doing.

"your words not mine"and also the words of Rabbi Yosef Zinni, more or less.

"HaShem has His reason for allowing this..."Hashem also had his reasons for allowing Shabtai Tzvi, Jesus, Christian missionaries, Al Qaeda, Ahmadinejad, and Haman. Does that mean that one must be respectful of all of them?

Sometimes, being absolutely frank is called for.

What happened was that most of this opposition happened a decade ago, and then people figured that they had already spoken out. But the opposition disappeared off the Internet (as I suppose the Maariv article expired) and was not accessible in English.

"everyword you say will be recorded and you will be held accountable for them"I am aware, and am unafraid. I don't believe I am doing anything wrong. I wonder if all those calling me names for opposing Nir Ben Artzi are similarly aware.

"Is it chillul haShem for Rav ben Artzi to make his so-called preposterous claims"

I thing that you are operating under the false presumption that Nir ben Artzi has semicha. He does not, and admits it.

Why should it be a chillul Hashem for Nir Ben Artzi to make preposterous claims? Who ever spoke of chillul Hashem?

"or more of one for us to call him delusional?"why is it a chillul Hashem to call someone (a non-rabbi, I might add), who is in fact delusional, delusional? what sort of chillul Hashem is this? hypothetically, if someone is on the street corner claiming the end is near, because aliens from the planet Xenon told him so, and I warn people that he is a schizophrenic, is this somehow a chillul Hashem? please explain your definition of chillul Hashem and how this fits into the definition.

"Who is defaming who?"Well, in this post I never declared that Nir Ben Artzi was defaming anyone, so this seems to me to be a nonsensical question. But if you want to see a sample of rabbinic opposition to Nir Ben Artzi, why not read this previous post?

Then, you can explain to us how Rav Ovadia Yosef and Rav Eliyahu Bakshi Doron, Rav Shlomo Amar, and so on and so forth are all defaming Rav [sic] Nir Ben Artzi.

Thank you Josh, for oh so carefully writing words of truth and brilliant analyzations in a clear and concise way. It shows the tremendous amount of education you have.You demonstrate that a true man of G-d stand for truth and is thus loved for this. What heroes are made of. Time will tell if artzi's "predictions" come true as he could be a good con-artist from erev rav.

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parshablog is published by (rabbi) josh waxman (joshwaxman [at] yahoo [dot] com), a grad student in Revel, a grad student in a Phd program in computer science at CUNY. i recently received semicha from RIETS. this blog is devoted to parsha as well as whatever it is i am currently learning.